Professor Belinda Wilkes

Biography

I was born in Staffordshire, England and grew up in Albrighton, Shropshire. I attended a local private school in Albrighton, followed by the High School for Girls, Wolverhampton, Staffordshire (1967-1974). I obtained a B.Sc.(Hons.) degree in Physics and Astronomy at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland (1978), and a PhD in optical observations of broad emission lines in high-redshift active galaxies at Cambridge University (1982).

I moved to Steward Observatory, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA, as a NATO SERC Postdoctoral Fellow (1982-1984), and on to an Astrophysicist (staff) position at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO), Cambridge, MA, USA (1984-2004). I was promoted to Senior Astrophysicist (2004-2020). I currently maintain my SAO connection as a Research Associate (2020-present). During my time at SAO I served on the Faculty, Harvard University Summer School (1988 & 1989), and as Director of NASA's Chandra X-ray Center, SAO (2014-2020).

In 2020 I relocated back to the UK, spending 10 months as a Sheepshank Fellow, Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge University. I then moved to Bristol to take up a Royal Society Wolfson Visiting Fellowship in the Astronomy Theme, School of Physics at the University of Bristol (2021-2025), where I am now an Honorary Professor (2024-).

Research interests

My research relates to multi-wavelength studies of quasars: galaxies containing super-massive black holes at their centres, and the most luminous sources in the Universe. This includes:

• Multi-wavelength observations of Spectral Energy Distributions (187 MHz - 3.5 keV) of quasars to study their energy generation mechanisms and the relation of emission lines and ionizing continuum shape.
• Multi-wavelength studies of the orientation unbiased radio-loud sample of 3CR quasars to disentangle orientation dependencies and understand the parent sample; and multi-wavelength observations of their radio jets to probe feedback between the central super-massive black hole and its host galaxy.
• Soft X-ray spectra of quasars, including intervening and intrinsic absorption and the association of the former with absorption seen in the ultra-violet.
• X-ray and multi-wavelength surveys with a particular interest in the resulting quasars and active galaxy samples, and detailed studies of individual sources.
• Optical spectroscopy of quasars and study of their broad emission lines.

Current researchers and PhD students